As you read pages 593-604 take notes in the chart below. Be sure to focus on causes of decline, European inervention and reform programs
Ottoman Retreat and the Birth of Turkey
Western Intrusions and Crisis: Egypt
There was an succession of weak leaders with the political and social order on the sultans at the top.
There was power struggles between the inactive sultans and the rival ministers, religious experts, and Janissary commanders. Its control was weaken over the populations.
Provincial officials and the local land-owning classes, the ayans, skimmed all the impoverished peasantry of their revenue.
Artisan workers deteriorated from the competition with the British. This led to urban riots in the 18th and 19th century.
Religious minorities grew more and more dependent on commercial dealing with European counterparts. It also undermined handicraft manufacturing.
By the early 18th century the Ottomans were pushed out of northern Balkans and Hungary. (With Russia strengthen)
In the 20th century the Ottoman empire benefited from the division between the Europeans powers from fear of land divisions. There were forms from within the empire in most of the 19th century.
There were divisions within the ottoman elites on how to reform.
The Sultans Selim III believed that bolder initiatives were needed to kept from surviving. He improved the administrative efficiency and built new armies and navies. He was killed by a Janissary revolt in 1807.
Mahmud II secretly built a small professional army with the help of European advisors in 1826. He ordered his agents to encourage a revolt of Janissary. Janissaries, their families and their religious allies were slaughtered. He programed reforms on Western precedents. He established diplomatic corps on Western line and exchanged ambassadors with European powers. European military advisors were overhauled the Ottomans training, armaments, and officers' education.
In the period of the Tanzimat reforms between 1839 and 1876 there was a heavily influence by Western power. University education with European teaching, postal system, telegraph, newspaper, and railways. Intensive legal reforms. It weaken the artisans class and other social groups gained little from Tanzimat reforms. Little improvements for the position of women was made until the last Ottoman sultan in 1908.
Ottoman's ability to fend off the assault of foreign aggressors with the initiation by sultans and their advisors. Western-educated bureaucrats, military officers and professionals had increasingly clashes with ulama and ayan. Ottoman SultanAbdul Hamid responded to the growing threat from westernized officers and civilians by tempting to restrict civil liberties. There measure deprived the westernized elite groups for forming imperial policies. He continued to push for westernization in certain areas. Western-style education institution grew and judicial reforms continued.
In 1889 the Ottoman Society for Union and Progress led to the abrupt end of Abdul Hamid. Bloodless coup of 1908, they successful with the sympathy within the military. Only a handful of the sultan's supporters were willing to die to defend the regime. Groups of officers came to power and restored the constitutions, freedoms, and such with sultans gaining little control but the officers came under in factional fights. They took much of the limited time remaining before WWI. Their power was unstable with the lost of new wars with the Northern Balkans.
Young turk officers were able to stave off collapse of the empire, hostile to European power and victories. They overtook the sultans, Arab leaders in Beirut and Damascus favored the coup 1908 but the young Turks continued the subjugation and determined to enforce state control. (It was not liked) The Quarrels between the turks and Arabs left Ottoman Empire to cut short in August 1914.
There was a crisis of confidence from the successive reverses and increasing strength of European rivals elicited a variety of responses in the Islamic world. Some argued for the Islamic past while others wanted the large-scale adoption of Western ways.
Arabs peoples of Fertile Crescent, Egypt, coastal Arabia, and north Africa by the early 1800a lived under Ottoman-Turkish control for centuries. (Arabs resented Turks but liked the Ottomans)
There was a risk of conquest by European powers from the diminishing capacity of the Ottomans.The Europeans capture of outlying but highly developed Islamic states engendered a sense of crisis among the Islamic faith in the Middle Eastern Heartlands. Muslims had been the assaulted with the powerful adversities of Christendom. The Islamic world was displaced by the West.
European didn't establish a permanent European presence in the Islamic heartlands. There were early movements from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. His motives was for Egyptian campaign as the beginning of destroying the British power in India. The French had the short end of earlier wars for empire. He slipped past the British blockade in the Mediterranean and put ashore his armies in July 1798. They wanted to help the Manluk regime then ruling as a vassal of the Ottoman sultans. The head of the coalition of manluk households that shared power in Egypt, Murad dismissed the intruder as a donkey boy. Murad's ignorance led to a series of crushing defeats. The discipline firepower of the French legions devastated the ranks of Mamluk cavalry. This lose showed how vulnerable the Muslim core areas were to European aggression.
The successful of the invasion of Egypt brought little advantage to Napoleon/ French.The British sank most f the French fleet in the Battle of Aboukir in August 1798.. The British were responsible for the French retreat.
The chaos that followed the French invasion and withdrawal in 1801, an Albanian origins young official named Muhammad Ali emerged as an effective ruler in Egypt. He used up-to-date European-style military forces. He introduced Western-style conscription to Egyptian peasants, hired French officers to train his troops, imported Western arms, and adopted Western tactics and modes of organization and supply. He invaded Syria and built a modern war fleet that threatened Istanbul on a number of occasions.
This reforms fell short to fundamental transformation of Egyptian society. To shore up his economical base, he ordered the Egyptian peasantry to increase their production of cotton, hemp, indigo, and other crops that were growing demand for industrial Europe. He tried to improve Egyptian harbors and extend irrigation work: it had some success. Military was modernized and education reforms were ambitious, but their was little improvement. There were numerous schemes to build up Egyptian industrial sector frustrated bu European powers.
Ali's also checked his plans for territorial expansion and left Egypt open to inroads from European powers. He died in 1848 and his empire of Egypt was crumbling. His successors confined their claims to Egypt and the Sudanic lands that stretched. There was intermarrying with Turkish families. The descents of Muhammad providing a succession of rulers were known as khedives after 1867. There were formal control until the military coup of Gamal Abdul Nasser overthrew then in 1952.
Ali's successors muddled his efforts to reform and revitalize Egyptian society.The increase of cotton production at the expense of the food grains and other crops rendered Egypt dependent on a single export. Some further education advances were made and it mainly in elute schools of French.
Much of the revenue the khedives managed to collect was wasted on extravagant pastimes. What money was left was squandered on fruitless military to assert Egyptian authority over the Sudanic peoples along the upper Nile. It led to growing indebtedness to European financiers in mid-19th century. Financiers later were Turkish elite to be in access to Egyptian's cheap cotton.
There was a second motive by the 1850s to build a canal across the ishnus of Suez. The completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, it was a vital commercial and military link between the European powers and their colonial empires in Asia and east Africa. The control for it became one of the key objectives for peaceful rivalries and warfare operations in the first half of the 20th century.
Khedival regime's ineptitude and the Ottoman sultans prompted discussion among Muslim intellectuals and political activists on how to ward off growing European menace. (Places like Muslim University of Azhar) People believed in jihads and the return of religious observance and social interactions existed in the golden age of Muhammad.
Thinkers like al-Afghani and his disciple Muhammad Adduh stressed the need for Muslims to borrow scientific learning and technology from the West and the revival of earlier capacity to innovate. They thought it was fitting for them to learn from the advances the Europeans. They also disputed the views of religious scholars.
Religious revivalists and those who stressed the need for western imports agreed the need for Muslim unity with the growing threat of Europeans. Their differences and uncertainties were infected into Islamic efforts to challenges the West. it is still a central problem in the Muslim world.
European powers had growing stability and access to Egypt from the mounting debts of the khedival regime and the strategic importance of the canal. Major challenge in the early 1880s was to influence foreign interests from the mounting supports of Ahmad Orabi. He lead a revolt against Egyptian regiments and officers in the summer of 1882. There riots in the city in Alexandria. The British sent expeditionary forces to crush Orabi's rebellion and secured their position of the khedive.
Egypt was dominated by both British consuls with puppet khedives and British advisors to all high-ranking Egyptian administrators There were never formally colonized, also controlled their finances and foreign affairs.
Egyptians tried to conquer and rule Sudan, begin in the 1820s. Egyptian authority was concentrated in areas of fertile land and in river towns like Khartoum. It was the center of administration in Sudan. The riverine areas, Egyptian rule was resented because there were corrupt and taxes were a heavy burden.
All groups in the Muslim areas were angered by Egyptian attempts in the 1870s to eradicate the slave trade.. It was a great source if profit for the merchants of the Nile towns and the nomads.
There was deep resentment and hostility aroused from the British intervention and Egyptian oppression by the late 1870s. Muhammad Achmad was the leader to once again unit the divided people. Local people associated with the promised deliverer, Mahdi, advancing his reputation. There was a acceptance as a divinely appointed leaders of revolt against foreign intruders.
He led to a number of such movements that swept throughout the sub-Saharan Africa since the 18th century. He led his followers in a violent assault on the Egyptians. They were in control of the nation of Sudan within a few years. At the peak of his power, he died.
The successor of Achmad was Khalifa Abdallahi, he built a strong expansive state. Islamic religious and ritual practices were enforced rigorously. Foreigners were imprison and expelled and the ban on slavery was lifted. The Malhdists armies threatened neighboring states on all sides. In the fall of 1896, the Malhdists were no match to the British and Kicthener. Within a year the Mahdist states collapsed and the British power advanced to the interior of Africa.
The land of the Qing Dynasty
The Qing Empire: 604 to 611 take outline on the Rise of Fall of the Qing Empire. Late Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the Qing in China
Main Idea: (Chinese) There was social unrest, severe economical dislocations, and official corruption for the places that were not of a high degree of social ability with the Manchus in the 18th century.
The Manchu nomads unexpectly and suddenly conquested China with leaders like Nurhaci that united the extremely fighting units within the eight banner armies. (Named after flags) By the early 17th century, Nurhavi brought the Manchuria and the non-Manchu people under his control. He harness the people of China and his elite adopted Chinese models. The bureaucracy was organized along Chinese lines, it adopted Chinese court ceremonies and Chinese scholar-officials.
The Manchus easily seized control of China since the ming Dynasty was weak and declining. A Ming official called for the Manchus to help them with the widespread rebellion in 1644, but they turned out to be more dangerous than the actually rebellions. They exploited the social unrest and political divisions and captured the Ming capital in a year. it took nearly two decades for the Manchus to completely take control of China.
The Manchu regime turned into the Qing dynasty, they ruled a very large land, they adopted many of practices from the Ming. Their armies forced submission by nomadic people in the west and compelled tributes from other kingdoms. The Qing retained much of the political system if the Ming predecessors. They had court calenders for more Confucian rituals. Scholar-officials continued to serve. They got rind of the weapons of conquering. There were few limits in on how high talent ethnic Chinese could rise the imperial bureaucracy. Much of the time the Chinese bureaucracy made up local and regional leaders while the Manchu were higher. They retained the examination system of Chinese classics. They styled themselves as the Sons of Heaven. Manchu leaders were early patrons of art with leaders like Kangxi who was a significant Confucian scholar. He and many other leaders employed thousands of scholars to make great encyclopedia of Chinese learnings.
Economy and society in the Early Centuries of the Qing Rule
Main idea: The Manchu preserved the Chinese political system. Women still had little power. The Manchu took strong measures to lessen rural distress and unrest. The regime had little control of landlords but it was the most dynamic.
Manchu determination to preserve much of Chinese political system was parallel to the equal conservation of the Chinese society as a whole. Writing of Zhu Xi remained in the dominant official thinking. Long-nurtured values were emphasized in education over commoners like old over young, rank and acceptance of hierarchy, male over female, scholar-bureaucrat over commoner. In elites, extended family remained the core unit of social structure and the state grew suspicious of any other forms that rivaled it.
The women's lives remained confine to the household. The dominance of elder men was upheld by family pressure and states. Male had the control to chose their brides and needed a sizable dowry. Sons were preferred over daughters and female infanticide rose. Males considerably outnumbered females.
A family's compound belonged to men, women from lower-class families continued to work on fields and sell produce in local markets. Women could not hope for much. If a women gave birth to son, they had a change to run the house.
Manchu took strong measures in alleviating the rural distress and unrest in the empire. Taxes and state labor demands were lowered. Incentives were given for people willing to resettle lands that were abandoned. A lot of the imperial budget was used to repair existing dikes, canals, and roadways and extending irrigations works. Peasants were encouraged to plant new crops, two to three crops.
The regime had little success in its efforts to control the landlord classes. The landlord class found that they could add more to their land with calls for loans to peasants or simply buying it out. Tenants had less and less bargaining power with dealing with the landlords from the surplus of workers. They were also objected to sharing their crops were the landlords or they were replaced. There was a gap between the rural gentry and ordinary peasants and labors increased.
The sector of Chinese society of the least control, was the most dynamic. The commercial and urban expansion gained new strength from early and half of the Manchu. There was regional diversification in crops like tea by the development of new ways to finance agricultural and artisans production. The state and mercantile class greatly profited from the influx of silver from china in payment for the exports of tea, porcelain, and silk textiles. There was many lucrative markets. From the profit of oversea trade, there was a group of merchants called the compradors that specialized in the import-export trade on China's south coast.
Rot from Within: Bureaucratic Breakdown and Social Disintegration
Main Idea: The Bureaucratic system was corrupt with personal enrichment and many declines, decaying from within.
The Qing started to decline in the late 18th century, the signs very similar to previous dynasties. The bureaucratic foundation was rotting from within. The exam later began more for cheating and favoritism. Some high officials of ensure a place for the ever-growing bureaucracy, despite formal restrictions. People with near it anyone with enough money could buy a post for sons or brothers. Impoverished scholars could be paid to take the exam for poorly educated or not-so-bright relatives. Examiners could be bribed to approve weak credentials or consult cheat sheets. Cheating was so common that in the early 18th century, students held a public demonstration at Yangzhou to protest bribes given by wealthy merchants. Poorly educated landlord's son, few received classical Confucian. Wealthy positions in bureaucracy were influenced by local officials and judges and enhanced family fortune . Effects of bureaucratic decisions on the peasantry and urban laborers.
Individuals families sought personal enrichment with revenues from state projects over several decades. It caused a drop in training and armaments of the military, funding for public work projects. There were leaking dikes and rampaging waters of the great river, it was catastrophe for much of northern eastern China. There regions of the Shandong peninsula, before the mid-19th century, the Huanghe emptied its water out. By the 1850s, the neglected dikes were broken down and the river flooded hundreds of square milers of heavily cultivated farmland. By the 1960's, the main channel of river flowed north. Millions of peasants were wiped out of livestock or lands to cultivate, many died.
There were future signs of dynastic decline. There was a food shortages and landlords demands prompted mass migrations. Beggars crowded the city streets and vagabond bands clogged the roads. There was much banditry, a major problems in many districts.
There was a wide assumption among Chinese thinks that the Manchus would be replaced by a new and vigorous dynasty, able to confront the problems. China desperately needed a innovation in technology and organization to increase its productivity to support its exploding population at a reasonable level. There was high and corrupt conservative.
Barbarians at the Southern Gates: The opium War and After
Main Idea: Manchu thought little of Europeans, but they traded opium with them for manufactured goods. Qing tried to stop opium flow but the European were at war after the attempts. The Europeans won and became in control of China's foreign policies and culture.
The Manchu rulers and their Chinese administrators treated the European like nomads and other peoples say them as barbarians. The Europeans came from civilization that was equal in sophistication and complexity. (Through small in size, they were heavily industrialized) It became critical in the wars between the Chinese, British and other European powers.
For centuries, the British merchants had eagerly exported silks, fine porcelains, tea, and other products from the Chinese empire. The Chinese were willing to take only silver bullions, the British didn't like it. They sought that they could trade Indian opium, by the early 19th century pounds and pounds of opium was traded legally and illegally. By the 1839, on the eve of Opium War, nearly 40,000 chests were imported by the Chinese.
The British found ways to reverse the trade balance to their favor, Chinese realized that the to their economy and social order. Within years, China's favorable trade balance and silver began to flow in large quantities out of the country. Trade expansion, public work and agricultural productivity declined, unemployment spread. Wealthy Chinese surplussed on opium. Opium dens spread rapidly in the towns and villages of the empire. Many people were addicted, strung-out officials neglected their administrative responsibilities, sons of prominent scholar-gentry family lost their ambition and laborers and peasants abandoned their work for opium.
Qing emperors issued major edicts to forbid opium traffic by the early 18th century, but there were little enforced. There were serious efforts to stop opium imports in the early 1820, they only drove the opium dealers from Canton to nearly islands and other hidden locations on the coast. In the late 1830s, the emperor sent Lin Zexu with orders to use every means available to stamp out the trade. He was very serious. He tried to win the cooperations of the European merchants and naval officers. He ordered European trading areas in Canton blockaded, warehouse searched and opium was confiscated and destroyed.
The Europeans merchants were enraged and demand military action to avenge their losses. Lin's measures violated both the property rights of the merchants and principles of free, the British ordered the Chinese to to stop anti-opium campaign or risk military intervention. War broke out in the late 1839, when the British threatened cities, the Qing emperor was forced to sue for peace and send Lin into exile in a remote province of the empire.
With the victories of the Opium War and a second conflict in the late 1850s that allowed European powers to force China to open trade and diplomatic exchanges. Hong Kong was the first to be established as a British commerce. European trade was permitted at five others ports, they were given more warehouses and living quarters. By the 1890s, there many ports of European and American traders, missionaries, and diplomats. Russia had won long-term leases of several ports and surrounding territory.
By the mid-19th century, China's foreign trade and customs were overseen by British Officials. The European nationals were sure to have easy access to China's markets and no protective tariffs. It helped the young Americans The Chinese were forced to accept European ambassadors at the Qing court. The Chinese were widely displeased that these "barbarians" took over.
A civilization at Risk:Rebellion and Failed reforms
Main Idea: The Qing dynasty, Confucian civilization, and the Chinese civilization as a whole started to decline. There were rebellions like the greatest one the Taiping Rebellion that was ultimately taken down by the scholar-gentry class.
The defeat in the Opium war contributed to the threaten of the Qing dynasty, but also China civilization as a whole.There was several rebellions in in south China in the 1850s and early 1860s, one that threaten to take control the empire. The greatest one was called the Taiping Rebellion led by mentally unstable, semi-Christianized prophet Hong Xiuquan. By the early 1850s, hid military commanders worked a growing number of followers into an army. By the spring of 1853 they captured a large territory of south-central China and established a capital at Najing. The northward drive lost its momentum and was imploded. Nanjing and many other prosperous cities was under control by the Taiping control. Eventually the quality of the military commanders and fighters declined. Taiping policies also alienated some of their own followers and increased the number of enemies. These policies were actually implemented/ was not beneficial. Europeans were alienated by Hong Kong.
The Taiping movement posed a serious alternation to Confucian civilization. The Taipings offered sweeping programs for social reforms, land redistribution, and liberty for women, but it attacked the traditional thinking of Confucianism. They smashed ancestral tablets and shrines and developed simplified script and mass literacy.
Taiping's attack on the scholar-gentry was the main causes of its ultimate defeat. The scholar-gentry became the focus o resistance to the Taipings. Qing officials like Zeng Guofan, riased military forces to fend off north China. He set reforms to stop corruption in the bureaucracy and revive the stagnating Chines e economy. These dynamic provincial leaders led to the self-strengthening movement, aimed at countering the challenges from the west, in the late 19th century. They modernized the armies, railways,and factories. The scholar-gentry class end the Taipings.
By the late 19th century, the Manchu rulers resisted far-reaching reforms to save the regime and the Chinese civilization and loss a war with Japan in 1894 and 1895. Manchu occasionally supported officials who pushed for extensive political and social reforms, but it did not work. (Didn't like western ideas)
The last decades of the dynasty was dominated by the ultraconservative dowager empress Cixi. In 1898, she crushed the most serious move towards reforms. Leading advocates for reform were executed or driven from China. The Manchus relied on divisions among the provincial officials and among the European powers to maintain their positions. Some Qing secretly backed popular outbursts aimed to expel foreigners from China like the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxer broke out in the 1898 and was put in the intervention of the imperialist powers in 1901. Its failure led to the European's greater control of China's internal affairs and the devolution of power to provincial officials.
The Fall of the Qing: the End of a Civilization
Main Idea: By 1911, the Qing dynasty was toppled and dynasty all together were gone. This lead to a turning point for Chinese civilization.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the Manchus were quickly gone, with the defeat of the Taipings: there was a great resistance to the Qing by secret societies. These underground organization led to numerous local risings against the dynasty by the late 19th century, but failed since they did not have go coordination and sufficient resources. By the end of the 19th century, the sons of some scholar-gentry and merchants joined these secret societies to overthrown the regime. Many young man that received European-style education was resistance and wanted to get rid of the Manchus. Revolutionaries like Sun Yat-sen enacted the desperate need for social programs for peasants and urban workers and they wanted to reflect western thought.
Revolutionariy, Sun Yat-sen
The revolutionaries in the middle class were deeply hostile to the involvement of imperialist powers in Chinese affairs. They condemned the Manchus for not controlling the foreigners. The attempts to coordinate an all-China rising failed on several occasions because of personal incompetence. In late 1911 there were secret society uprisings, student demonstrations, and mutinies on the part of imperial troops to oppose the government. In February 1912, the last emperor of China, Puyi was deposed and the more powerful provincial lord was asked to establish a republican government.
The revolution of 1911 toppled the Qing dynasty and it was a turning point for Chinese civilization was reached in 1905. The last of the Confucian civil service exams were given. Confucianism , massive civil bureaucracy, scholar-gentry elite, and artistic accomplished came under increasing criticism in the early 20th century.
The Qing Empire: 604 to 611 take outline on the Rise of Fall of the Qing Empire.
Late Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the Qing in China
Main Idea: (Chinese) There was social unrest, severe economical dislocations, and official corruption for the places that were not of a high degree of social ability with the Manchus in the 18th century.
- The Manchu nomads unexpectly and suddenly conquested China with leaders like Nurhaci that united the extremely fighting units within the eight banner armies. (Named after flags) By the early 17th century, Nurhavi brought the Manchuria and the non-Manchu people under his control. He harness the people of China and his elite adopted Chinese models. The bureaucracy was organized along Chinese lines, it adopted Chinese court ceremonies and Chinese scholar-officials.
- The Manchus easily seized control of China since the ming Dynasty was weak and declining. A Ming official called for the Manchus to help them with the widespread rebellion in 1644, but they turned out to be more dangerous than the actually rebellions. They exploited the social unrest and political divisions and captured the Ming capital in a year. it took nearly two decades for the Manchus to completely take control of China.
- The Manchu regime turned into the Qing dynasty, they ruled a very large land, they adopted many of practices from the Ming. Their armies forced submission by nomadic people in the west and compelled tributes from other kingdoms. The Qing retained much of the political system if the Ming predecessors. They had court calenders for more Confucian rituals. Scholar-officials continued to serve. They got rind of the weapons of conquering. There were few limits in on how high talent ethnic Chinese could rise the imperial bureaucracy. Much of the time the Chinese bureaucracy made up local and regional leaders while the Manchu were higher. They retained the examination system of Chinese classics. They styled themselves as the Sons of Heaven. Manchu leaders were early patrons of art with leaders like Kangxi who was a significant Confucian scholar. He and many other leaders employed thousands of scholars to make great encyclopedia of Chinese learnings.
Economy and society in the Early Centuries of the Qing RuleMain idea: The Manchu preserved the Chinese political system. Women still had little power. The Manchu took strong measures to lessen rural distress and unrest. The regime had little control of landlords but it was the most dynamic.
- Manchu determination to preserve much of Chinese political system was parallel to the equal conservation of the Chinese society as a whole. Writing of Zhu Xi remained in the dominant official thinking. Long-nurtured values were emphasized in education over commoners like old over young, rank and acceptance of hierarchy, male over female, scholar-bureaucrat over commoner. In elites, extended family remained the core unit of social structure and the state grew suspicious of any other forms that rivaled it.
- The women's lives remained confine to the household. The dominance of elder men was upheld by family pressure and states. Male had the control to chose their brides and needed a sizable dowry. Sons were preferred over daughters and female infanticide rose. Males considerably outnumbered females.
- A family's compound belonged to men, women from lower-class families continued to work on fields and sell produce in local markets. Women could not hope for much. If a women gave birth to son, they had a change to run the house.
- Manchu took strong measures in alleviating the rural distress and unrest in the empire. Taxes and state labor demands were lowered. Incentives were given for people willing to resettle lands that were abandoned. A lot of the imperial budget was used to repair existing dikes, canals, and roadways and extending irrigations works. Peasants were encouraged to plant new crops, two to three crops.
- The regime had little success in its efforts to control the landlord classes. The landlord class found that they could add more to their land with calls for loans to peasants or simply buying it out. Tenants had less and less bargaining power with dealing with the landlords from the surplus of workers. They were also objected to sharing their crops were the landlords or they were replaced. There was a gap between the rural gentry and ordinary peasants and labors increased.
- The sector of Chinese society of the least control, was the most dynamic. The commercial and urban expansion gained new strength from early and half of the Manchu. There was regional diversification in crops like tea by the development of new ways to finance agricultural and artisans production. The state and mercantile class greatly profited from the influx of silver from china in payment for the exports of tea, porcelain, and silk textiles. There was many lucrative markets. From the profit of oversea trade, there was a group of merchants called the compradors that specialized in the import-export trade on China's south coast.
Rot from Within: Bureaucratic Breakdown and Social DisintegrationMain Idea: The Bureaucratic system was corrupt with personal enrichment and many declines, decaying from within.
- The Qing started to decline in the late 18th century, the signs very similar to previous dynasties. The bureaucratic foundation was rotting from within. The exam later began more for cheating and favoritism. Some high officials of ensure a place for the ever-growing bureaucracy, despite formal restrictions. People with near it anyone with enough money could buy a post for sons or brothers. Impoverished scholars could be paid to take the exam for poorly educated or not-so-bright relatives. Examiners could be bribed to approve weak credentials or consult cheat sheets. Cheating was so common that in the early 18th century, students held a public demonstration at Yangzhou to protest bribes given by wealthy merchants. Poorly educated landlord's son, few received classical Confucian. Wealthy positions in bureaucracy were influenced by local officials and judges and enhanced family fortune . Effects of bureaucratic decisions on the peasantry and urban laborers.
- Individuals families sought personal enrichment with revenues from state projects over several decades. It caused a drop in training and armaments of the military, funding for public work projects. There were leaking dikes and rampaging waters of the great river, it was catastrophe for much of northern eastern China. There regions of the Shandong peninsula, before the mid-19th century, the Huanghe emptied its water out. By the 1850s, the neglected dikes were broken down and the river flooded hundreds of square milers of heavily cultivated farmland. By the 1960's, the main channel of river flowed north. Millions of peasants were wiped out of livestock or lands to cultivate, many died.
- There were future signs of dynastic decline. There was a food shortages and landlords demands prompted mass migrations. Beggars crowded the city streets and vagabond bands clogged the roads. There was much banditry, a major problems in many districts.
- There was a wide assumption among Chinese thinks that the Manchus would be replaced by a new and vigorous dynasty, able to confront the problems. China desperately needed a innovation in technology and organization to increase its productivity to support its exploding population at a reasonable level. There was high and corrupt conservative.
Barbarians at the Southern Gates: The opium War and AfterMain Idea: Manchu thought little of Europeans, but they traded opium with them for manufactured goods. Qing tried to stop opium flow but the European were at war after the attempts. The Europeans won and became in control of China's foreign policies and culture.
- The Manchu rulers and their Chinese administrators treated the European like nomads and other peoples say them as barbarians. The Europeans came from civilization that was equal in sophistication and complexity. (Through small in size, they were heavily industrialized) It became critical in the wars between the Chinese, British and other European powers.
- For centuries, the British merchants had eagerly exported silks, fine porcelains, tea, and other products from the Chinese empire. The Chinese were willing to take only silver bullions, the British didn't like it. They sought that they could trade Indian opium, by the early 19th century pounds and pounds of opium was traded legally and illegally. By the 1839, on the eve of Opium War, nearly 40,000 chests were imported by the Chinese.
- The British found ways to reverse the trade balance to their favor, Chinese realized that the to their economy and social order. Within years, China's favorable trade balance and silver began to flow in large quantities out of the country. Trade expansion, public work and agricultural productivity declined, unemployment spread. Wealthy Chinese surplussed on opium. Opium dens spread rapidly in the towns and villages of the empire. Many people were addicted, strung-out officials neglected their administrative responsibilities, sons of prominent scholar-gentry family lost their ambition and laborers and peasants abandoned their work for opium.
- Qing emperors issued major edicts to forbid opium traffic by the early 18th century, but there were little enforced. There were serious efforts to stop opium imports in the early 1820, they only drove the opium dealers from Canton to nearly islands and other hidden locations on the coast. In the late 1830s, the emperor sent Lin Zexu with orders to use every means available to stamp out the trade. He was very serious. He tried to win the cooperations of the European merchants and naval officers. He ordered European trading areas in Canton blockaded, warehouse searched and opium was confiscated and destroyed.
- The Europeans merchants were enraged and demand military action to avenge their losses. Lin's measures violated both the property rights of the merchants and principles of free, the British ordered the Chinese to to stop anti-opium campaign or risk military intervention. War broke out in the late 1839, when the British threatened cities, the Qing emperor was forced to sue for peace and send Lin into exile in a remote province of the empire.
- With the victories of the Opium War and a second conflict in the late 1850s that allowed European powers to force China to open trade and diplomatic exchanges. Hong Kong was the first to be established as a British commerce. European trade was permitted at five others ports, they were given more warehouses and living quarters. By the 1890s, there many ports of European and American traders, missionaries, and diplomats. Russia had won long-term leases of several ports and surrounding territory.
- By the mid-19th century, China's foreign trade and customs were overseen by British Officials. The European nationals were sure to have easy access to China's markets and no protective tariffs. It helped the young Americans The Chinese were forced to accept European ambassadors at the Qing court. The Chinese were widely displeased that these "barbarians" took over.
A civilization at Risk:Rebellion and Failed reformsMain Idea: The Qing dynasty, Confucian civilization, and the Chinese civilization as a whole started to decline. There were rebellions like the greatest one the Taiping Rebellion that was ultimately taken down by the scholar-gentry class.
- The defeat in the Opium war contributed to the threaten of the Qing dynasty, but also China civilization as a whole.There was several rebellions in in south China in the 1850s and early 1860s, one that threaten to take control the empire. The greatest one was called the Taiping Rebellion led by mentally unstable, semi-Christianized prophet Hong Xiuquan. By the early 1850s, hid military commanders worked a growing number of followers into an army. By the spring of 1853 they captured a large territory of south-central China and established a capital at Najing. The northward drive lost its momentum and was imploded. Nanjing and many other prosperous cities was under control by the Taiping control. Eventually the quality of the military commanders and fighters declined. Taiping policies also alienated some of their own followers and increased the number of enemies. These policies were actually implemented/ was not beneficial. Europeans were alienated by Hong Kong.
- The Taiping movement posed a serious alternation to Confucian civilization. The Taipings offered sweeping programs for social reforms, land redistribution, and liberty for women, but it attacked the traditional thinking of Confucianism. They smashed ancestral tablets and shrines and developed simplified script and mass literacy.
- Taiping's attack on the scholar-gentry was the main causes of its ultimate defeat. The scholar-gentry became the focus o resistance to the Taipings. Qing officials like Zeng Guofan, riased military forces to fend off north China. He set reforms to stop corruption in the bureaucracy and revive the stagnating Chines e economy. These dynamic provincial leaders led to the self-strengthening movement, aimed at countering the challenges from the west, in the late 19th century. They modernized the armies, railways,and factories. The scholar-gentry class end the Taipings.
- By the late 19th century, the Manchu rulers resisted far-reaching reforms to save the regime and the Chinese civilization and loss a war with Japan in 1894 and 1895. Manchu occasionally supported officials who pushed for extensive political and social reforms, but it did not work. (Didn't like western ideas)
- The last decades of the dynasty was dominated by the ultraconservative dowager empress Cixi. In 1898, she crushed the most serious move towards reforms. Leading advocates for reform were executed or driven from China. The Manchus relied on divisions among the provincial officials and among the European powers to maintain their positions. Some Qing secretly backed popular outbursts aimed to expel foreigners from China like the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxer broke out in the 1898 and was put in the intervention of the imperialist powers in 1901. Its failure led to the European's greater control of China's internal affairs and the devolution of power to provincial officials.
The Fall of the Qing: the End of a CivilizationMain Idea: By 1911, the Qing dynasty was toppled and dynasty all together were gone. This lead to a turning point for Chinese civilization.